Ssd!

Hey guys building a new desktop and I'm really flirting with getting an SSD. However I'm terrified of the lifespan. I've read several conflicting arguments so I'd like to hear some first hand experience. I'm just wanting to use it as a boot drive keeping my games and files and such on a hdd.

Six were Corsair Force 3 drives, two of those failed within a month. The RMA replacements and the other 4 are still working fine.
10 were Intel 520's, and all of those are still working great, the oldest is about 9~10 months.

An SSD is basically non volatile memory (Giant SD card) which is billions of tiny transistors that store either a 1 or a zero. These capacitors have a limited number of times they can be written.

This leads to the Idea that SSD's don't last long.

Let me ease your mind by bringing up two points.
First the mean time before failure on SSD as a general rule is 5 years or more. and that's if you are running heavy IO.

SSD typically go bad over a longer period of time where as HDD are more likely to have a catastrophic failure. You are more likely to have data loss on an HDD than an SSD

If you are still worried some things you can do.

1 if you run windows make sure disk fragmentation is disabled (windows may or may not do it on it's own) Fragmentation doesn't matter on SSD's so it is a waste of needless read/writes.

Don't use an SSD to store lots of data that will get read and more importantly written a lot. Use an HDD for storing music/video etc. Us an SSD for the OS.

Also lets not forget a HDD is a bunch of discs spinning around at 5400 =-15000 RPMS with read write heads hovering over them held up only by a cushion of air provided by the spinning disk. Bearing goes out in the spindle = game over. Read/write head crash becuase of vibration = game over.

SSD's have no moving parts and have built in methods the balance IO operations on individual capacitors to increase life span.

That helps ease my mind. I've been really lucky with my hdds, only replacing them because of upgrades. So if I were to kill the paging and the fragmenting and all the other things generally recommended, I should be ok as long as I'm saving all data to hdd.

That helps ease my mind. I've been really lucky with my hdds, only replacing them because of upgrades. So if I were to kill the paging and the fragmenting and all the other things generally recommended, I should be ok as long as I'm saving all data to hdd.

Correct. That is how I am set up. I'd watch Tiger Direct. The OCZ will occasionally go on sale for 60 bucks. An SSD at 1 dollar per gig is a no brainer. 60 gig is just enough for Windows and programs to fit on and leave about 20-ish gigs of breathing room. What I did was use a USB 3.0 thumb disk plugged into a USB 3.0 port and installe most of my apps on the thumb drive with http://portableapps.com/.

I've used SSD's for years and they are the biggest improvement since dual core processors. I the difference is night and day, you won't believe you waited so long. Set up properly they will last for years. Keep in mind while reading consumer reviews those who write them are either enthusiasts or had problems, more people with problems speak out than those who don't.

I'm currently using a Crucial M4 and love it. My other choice would be a Samsung 830.

I've used SSD's for years and they are the biggest improvement since dual core processors. I the difference is night and day, you won't believe you waited so long. Set up properly they will last for years. Keep in mind while reading consumer reviews those who write them are either enthusiasts or had problems, more people with problems speak out than those who don't.

I'm currently using a Crucial M4 and love it. My other choice would be a Samsung 830.

The 830 64gb is on newegg for $40 right now. Just picked one up and love it so far.

I have been using usb thumb drives as boot drives and as main drives running linux operating systems. The one has been running near continuously for around three years with a full lubuntu install. Given that these thumb drives were cheap office max sunday specials and they have held up this long, I would say that ssd main drives designed for such purpose would have to last much longer. The only issue I have had is some thumbs are slower causing a delay when running full os, but fine for booting a live os. I know this is slightly different than what op is doing, but should give some insight to the durability of ssd.

Itoyed with the idea of a software raid array of USB drives. in the end it was cheaper to go SSD as the fast PCEi USB cards that supported 3.0 where $$$$$. I have about four bootable USB drives in my tool bag I use for work. Very handy. Micro center had a sell on 64 gig USB 3.0 a while back. Once a week I use clone zilla and clone my home OS to the thumb drive. Nice you carry your OS around in your pocket.